


Care Instructions

by narie



Category: Glee
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-13
Updated: 2012-02-13
Packaged: 2017-10-31 01:58:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/338620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/narie/pseuds/narie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are some things about living in New York that are less than ideal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Care Instructions

**Author's Note:**

> With many thanks to hedgerose and ileliberte over on LJ/tumblr for beta-reading.

Kurt is not quite sure what the etiquette is for this particular situation - none of his guides cover it, a flaw only readily apparent in hindsight. He's standing in his dorm's laundry room, air damp from too many, too-wet clothes tumble-dried at too-high a setting. All of the machines are occupied, but only half of them seem to actually be running. Is he supposed to just wait? When this happens on TV there's always an empty washer available for the plucky, and frequently heart-broken, heroine, but thinking more about it, there is also always at least one pile of clothes unceremoniously dumped on a chair. 

"Ugh," he mutters, digging reluctantly into the first finished washer he finds. He pulls out multiple pairs of jeans - far too many for the capacity of the machine - and then, horrifyingly, two towels. Tangled inside them are multiple somethings he's sure he'd seen that day he forgot to knock on Finn's door and caught him browsing the Victoria's Secret website far too intently for the fumbling excuses he made about Rachel's birthday being soon. 

Deep down he's known something like this would happen. Dry cleaning is surprisingly expensive, now that it is not backed by his earnings at the shop or by his standing as Mrs Cusanovich's far most frequent customer and the discounts that entailed. He supposes living in Manhattan carries an additional premium, but really, this is as student-y a neighbourhood as possible, and even here it's quite clear that he cannot keep up the standard he was used to. He left some of his most beloved and delicate pieces back in Lima, and has been steadying himself to silently overlook other people's mixing of denim with jersey for days now. At his most charitable he was even prepared to forgive the presence of synthetic fibers that really ought to be washed at colder temperatures and with a gentler cycle, but it's the frilly lime green thong and the polka-dotted soggy push-up bra irreverently, shapelessly squished amongst all that heavy cotton that does it for him and has him dumping some random girl's wet things on the first flat surface he finds and reaching for his phone in a desperate rush.

"Carole," he breathes into the phone as soon as she answers. It's so warming to hear a familiar voice; he'd briefly considered calling Blaine, who would've doubtlessly listened and commiserated, but his finger slipped and he scrolled too far down, and he dialed 'home' instead. "Oh god, hi Carole!"

"Kurt! Is everything ok, honey? You sound a little flustered. Do you want me to get your father?"

"No," he says, realising that he would much rather talk to Carole about this; she's far more likely to understand him. His dad will laugh - lovingly, sure, but also bemusedly. "I'm fine, don't worry. It's just... they're _savages_ , Carole. Savages!"

"Savages? Are you sure you're ok, Kurt? Where are you, there's a lot of noise and it's making it hard to hear you."

"I'm fine, Carole," he insists, and realises that he's going to have to empty another washer if he truly wants to wash all of his clothes tonight. He has postponed his first encounter with the laundry room as long as possible, but it's ten days into his undergraduate life and he needs some of his wardrobe basics back, especially that one pair of jeans that originally belonged to Blaine. "I'm just trying to do laundry, but instead I have just had a sobering epiphany: all of my classmates were raised by _wolves_." He swears he can hear Carole trying not to laugh on the other side of the phone at that. He imagines her in the kitchen - he thinks that's the tap running behind her that he can hear - early autumn sun still streaming in, cordless phone held between her shoulder and tilted head, and wonders where his father is. Is he helping out, drying as she washes like they would do when Kurt was younger? Maybe he's watching TV, catching some sort of game, whatever is in season right now. 

"Jeans and towels together," he explains further, and finds that the combination of shock and lifting of wet clothes has rendered him a bit breathless after all. "Jeans and towels. Light towels and non-fast denim in warm water! And push up bras too, all in the same load! Although I don't think they're going to be pushing up much of anything after this, they're completely deformed now." 

Carole laughs, this time unmistakeably, but it's not ribbing or harsh, it's simply fond. "Kurt, honey, don't take this the wrong way but I know many grown women who are less conscientious about their laundry than you." From behind her, faint, comes what he thinks must be his father's laughter after all.

"That's because none of their clothes are remotely as nice as mine," he answers immediately. "No one in Lima appreciates a good knee-length cashmere cardigan like I can." 

Silence falls briefly as he sorts through his dirty clothes for any extra whites he can add to this load. There are no more to be found, however, and the washing machine is not even half full yet. Kurt sighs. "Finn hasn't called you with this kind of problem, has he?" 

"No," confirms Carole. "I don't think Finn has even thought about doing laundry yet. He's probably still in that stage where buying new underwear seems like a far more sensible solution." 

Kurt shudders, slamming the machine's lid shut. Finn's semester started a week before his own. "Right. Hold on a second." In his unfamiliarity with the system he's forgotten to pre-fill the machine, so he slides six (six!) quarters into the slots and blanches when the display flashes '27 min' at him. 

"The wash cycle is twenty seven minutes," he tells Carole disbelievingly. "That's not even a real pre-wash! And they're making me pay $1.50 for that."

Carole laughs yet again, and Kurt thinks that, like many other interactions they have had over the past months, this conversation is probably equally unexpected for both of them. Until last year Kurt had only hazy memories and his friends' parents to tell him what life as a complete family was, after all, and the same is true of her. "I'll tell you what," she says, "tomorrow I'll drive down to Ray's and buy a plastic tub and some handwashing detergent, and then I'll head on down to the post office. You should get it by the end of the week." 

"Will you really? That would be _great_. Thank you so much," he tells her. Both of them know it's not necessary. Kurt can find pretty much everything he needs around campus, and if for some reason he can't, there is always the subway and a trip to Target (incognito, because otherwise Rachel would tell everyone immediately and undo years of hard work with a single sentence). All of which makes his gratitude that much greater.

"It's no problem at all, you know that." 

He wonders if, after they hang up and his father and Carole both retire to the sofa (in Kurt's head they are always seated a comfortable distance apart, clearly loving but not undignifiedly close) she will recount this conversation to him, and he will say, "Have I ever told you the story of how when Kurt was 14 our washer broke and I suggested using the local laundromat instead of replacing it? He wouldn't speak to me for weeks, no matter how often I tried to explain to him that 2008 was a bad year and the machine he wanted was outside our range."

He considers the other machine he's opened and the rest of his clothes, the vest in his hands. It came from a thrift store so it probably will not be its first encounter with a washing machine, but Kurt has always washed things like this by hand, letting them sit in a small plastic basin with a splash of Woolite before gently rinsing them under lukewarm water. For all that his dorm layout means he only has to share a bathroom with the other three people in his suite there is still no sink or bathtub where he can wash his knits in so the spin cycle doesn't warp them. And there's no sink down here either, only the ten ugly machines that have all of six settings (hot - warm - cold; delicates - perm press - normal), crammed next to ten equally unsophisticated dryers in a basement sullied equally by used dryer sheets and the lint from the filters. 

He'd never thought he'd find himself feeling like this, not in New York, but for a fleeting second he yearns for Lima and the front-loading machine he left behind in their basement; and suddenly there's a pang of something uncurling in his stomach. Not unqualified homesickness or loneliness, but also not just the simple warmth associated with home. 

As soon as Blaine gets here they're getting an apartment together. One with an in-unit machine.


End file.
